Interview with Meghan McNabb from MEGS International

In this Facebook Live interview, Angela and Meghan McNabb, from MEGS International, discuss social media marketing strategies on various platforms. Meghan’s true passion in life has been to learn peoples stories and how to give those stories wings to fly through their online presence.

Transcription

ANGELA: So we are live.

MEGHAN: Yes.

ANGELA: We’re done, we’re live. Okay, we pressed the button, we’re live. And when people get on, they’re going to notice Scott’s not here with me today. Oh, it says our connection is weak. We’re just going to wait. We’re going to wait – there, our connection is better. Okay, sorry about that.

MEGHAN: That’s okay.

ANGELA: We test our connection every single time, and the last two times our connection has been weak before we started, or as soon as we started. So that’s kind of weird. But it’s good now.

MEGHAN: Awesome.

ANGELA: So we’re going to wait just a couple of minutes before we get into the meat and potatoes of today, and I’ll end up introducing you again, but for anyone who’s with us live, you’ll notice that Scott doesn’t look like Scott today.

Scott is actually just on the other side of this wall. Say hi, Scott! …

ANGELA: Anyways, I’m with Meghan McNabb from MEGS International. Meghan is a social media strategist. I think what’s really cool, besides the fact that you’re a social media strategist, is that you’re a millennial, because I don’t know many millennials besides my son and his friends. So it’s really cool getting a very structured business perspective on social media from you. I know lots of millennials who use social media just as social media, but not for business.

MEGHAN: Right.

ANGELA: So I think it’s really cool that I’ve got a millennial here today that is also a social media strategist. Just a bit about Meghan, what she does is she helps small businesses and entrepreneurs – and all-sized businesses – on their social media strategies and plan in a way that simplifies it, that they can implement it themselves. You say in 15 minutes a day.

MEGHAN: It can happen.

ANGELA: I don’t know, that’s crazy. I guess if you don’t get lost in it, right?

MEGHAN: Right.

ANGELA: But I really think today is going to be cool because we’re going to get your perspective on video marketing and how that works as well with the social media plan. Today we’re going to veer off from just speaking about video – we’re still going to speak about video, and Meghan’s going to show us some really cool things about Stories.

MEGHAN: Yes. I love Stories.

ANGELA: [Things] that I’m really not using, but I’m really interested to know because I want to start using it. That’s where video – well, everything, but video can really be used in a Story.

We’re going to talk about figuring out where your audience is and picking maybe where people need to be, because I think for social media we’re like “ugh, there’s so many things.” That’s what we spoke about last week. There are so many places in social media, and we talked about you should be where your customers are – but there are businesses out there who have more than one demographic, right?

MEGHAN: Yeah.

ANGELA: They have to market differently in different places for each demographic. So maybe picking the top three, we’re going to talk about, and content calendars. Yeah, so we’re going to talk about all of that today.

MEGHAN: Awesome. I’m excited.

ANGELA: Yeah. We have someone with us today. I’m not sure. I know we’ve got Scott, who’s watching because he’s not here doing this today. How lucky is he? We’ve got a couple other people that have popped on. But I think we should probably get started.

MEGHAN: Sure.

ANGELA: First let’s talk about simplifying a strategy, because I’ve been told before for your social media – hey, there’s another Megan. How are ya?

MEGHAN: Hey, Megan!

ANGELA: We talk about social media strategies, and it really gets overwhelming – even for me, because I get lost in social media when I’m on there. Creating a content calendar, I’ve been told before “you’ve got to create a content calendar.” We had a conversation, and I thought you broke it down in a really cool way, talking about an easier way to create themes.

MEGHAN: Yes. Love themes. Really, social media themes make or break your success online, in my opinion. As you may know or may not know, having your target market is super important across all platforms and for business just in general. If you want to be able to attract the right people, you have to know who you’re talking to. Especially on social media, the more specific you can get and create a Story for them, that’s how you’re going to get a following, because a following is literally people following you. That’s what it is.

ANGELA: And the more following you have, the more engaged people are, and the more engaged people are, the more they’re willing to do business with you. Right?

MEGHAN: Right.

ANGELA: Really, that’s what it breaks down to. Yes, we would all like more friends and followers and to feel socially accepted; I think that’s actually a big part of it.

MEGHAN: That’s a huge part of it.

ANGELA: But for business, if that doesn’t convert into leads in business, then what’s it all for?

MEGHAN: Right. And it’s all about creating something that’s authentic. To create authenticity, you have to know who you want to speak to and help them understand why that’s important to your brand.

What I like to do is once you know who your target market is, figure out what are the things that are affecting their day-to-day life every month, and what’s affecting you in your business? You can build a theme around that strategy so you know who you’re talking to, and they actually are impacted by that content. It increases the likelihood of them engaging with it, and especially sharing it, if they get an emotional connection to it.

ANGELA: For example, let’s say we’re a landscaper. We would look at our customer’s journey alongside with the services we provide, and we would create themes based on that journey. So in January, what’s the theme for a landscaper? In February, March? So we look and we create that theme because it’s going to change every month based on your target audience’s journey.

MEGHAN: Yeah.

ANGELA: And where they are in their life and where they could be in their buying pattern for your business. But we’re not talking about selling to them, really. Even though that’s the end goal, we’re talking about creating meaningful content that will help them in that journey.

MEGHAN: Right. You always want to be coming from a space of awareness and trust or trying to create some sort of action.

The way that I like to break it down is I use the 70/20/10 rule. 70% of your content should be educating your following, educating the people who you want to be interacting with on what makes you great, what are the reasons why they should be using your services, and how you impact them in their day-to-day life – and that goes back to the themes.

The best way to do that is actually video. It really is the most solid way to attract the right people. And if you have a theme to follow, it makes it that much easier to create the content.

ANGELA: Yeah, because people have a hard time keeping up with and creating the content, but if you’ve always got that in mind, I think it becomes much easier.

MEGHAN: Much easier, yeah. That’s when the 15 minutes comes in, because once you’ve created a calendar and you’re following a theme each month, rather than having to spend hours trying to figure out what you want to talk about, you’re already in the flow of your year.

If we’re using landscapers, for example, this is July. This is their busiest time of the year. So they’re going to be wanting to talk about all the amazing things that they’re doing right now, taking videos of the landscapes that they’ve created, doing befores and afters, those sort of things. Showing people what they are doing in their business in their day-to-day life.

ANGELA: And giving tips on how people can be making their own beautifications of their yards, right? Showing themselves as experts.

MEGHAN: Exactly.

ANGELA: It’s funny, I actually talk about two types of videos: I talk about live videos and I talk about prerecorded videos. But there is a third type of video.

MEGHAN: There is, and it’s my favorite video.

ANGELA: Do you think it’s a millennial thing?

MEGHAN: It might be, because we want things to happen so quickly that we don’t care if it only lasts for 24 hours. We don’t care if it’s there forever, because once we’ve watched it once we’re moving on to the next thing.

We’re talking about Stories – so Facebook Stories, Instagram Story – and where it was originated is Snapchat Stories. Snapchat is a millennial platform, obviously, and everything on Snapchat only lasts 24 hours. Well, if you’re doing a Snap Story, then yes, it lasts 24 hours. If you’re just taking a picture, once you view it, it disappears. It’s not there anymore, ever.

It’s kind of I guess the millennial way of doing things. We want things that are in the moment. What I like about Stories is it gives you an insight into what people are actually doing during their day.

A lot of the time if you’re looking at the videos that are online right now, there’s lots of great content, but they’re scripted and they have a – what’s the word I’m looking for? I guess end goal. There’s a real call to action, which means that they’re doing something, they’re taking action on it.

Whereas Snapchat Stories or Facebook Stories or Instagram Stories is a way to actually show who you are and be more authentic.

ANGELA: That’s cool.

MEGHAN: And that’s the key of social media.

ANGELA: Yeah. We talk about that. We talk about the difference – live is being more organic, and prerecorded, we get to be very clear in our message. There’s a place for everything.

But Stories is really cool because that’s where we get to let people into our life. I mean, not personally speaking, unless it has to do with your business and it has to do with that buying pattern we talked about where they become followers and then they become engaged followers, and then when they need your product or service, then they think of you because they’ve got this online relationship. Stories is really cool. We were just talking about that today, right?

MEGHAN: Yeah.

ANGELA: For Snapchat, again, it’s more of a millennial, but I feel like sometimes what happens is millennials adopt these – like millennials were the first to use Facebook, right? And then it was adopted by the rest of the world very quickly.

I know there’s Snapchat and Instagram are having a battle right now, and I hear Instagram’s winning out. But Instagram used to be very millennial, but now more demographics are in Instagram.

MEGHAN: Yes. I think that has a lot to do with Facebook buying them. I think that kind of took a big step. Any millennial – and all millennials identify themselves as this, and if they don’t it still exists for them – we are the digital pioneers. We were the first ones there. Each platform was pretty much designed with us in mind. So as each demographic has started to adapt to new platforms, we tend to migrate on.

But the cool thing about Instagram, when Facebook took it over, they still kept the feel, but they allowed there to be some overlap. You’ve probably seen the notifications that you get that “oh, this person’s on Instagram” or “your friend on Facebook is on Instagram.” The reason that that’s so important is that’s how people who are on Facebook and only used Facebook even knew that Instagram existed. I think that’s what had the biggest impact on them.

ANGELA: Let’s talk about tips. I don’t know how many people we have; it’s fluctuating. Does anyone have a demographic they want to give us? And then we can, or Meghan can tell you, based on gender and age – maybe just give us those two things – what three platforms you should be using, how you can be using them, and what’s the most impactful kind of content for those platforms.

So if anyone is on – and I’ll ask again later if we don’t have anyone who’s wanting to give that information now, but age and gender. Age within let’s say 15 years.

MEGHAN: Yeah.

ANGELA: Age within a 15 year gap. Okay, moms, so that’s women 25 to 45. That’s good enough, great.

MEGHAN: Awesome. 25 to 45, moms. First let’s break that down, because 25 to 45 kind of are two different demographics. I would break it down further to 25 to 35 and 35 to 45.

ANGELA: Because it’s moms she’s looking for, not women.

MEGHAN: Exactly, yes.

ANGELA: If it was women, we might be able to, but a 25-year-old mom acts very different than a 35- or 45-year-old mom.

MEGHAN: Exactly, because a 25-year-old mom probably has an infant or a small child, whereas a 45-year-old mom may be dealing with a teenager or a young adult, which has a very different way of how they’re dealing with their day-to-day life, what they’re looking at on social media, what kind of things are affecting their day-to-day. This goes back to when we were talking about themes and why it’s so important.

If we start with the 25 to 35, they’re a little bit less experienced in life, give or take, if you want to say so. I can be that person; I’m 25, so nothing wrong with that. [laughs]

And if I were a mom tomorrow, a lot of the things that I find with when you’re on social media, the things that you will see is there’s more attention to focusing on the age of your child. When you’re a mom, your first focus is – thanks, Megan, thanks for that; yes, we love that – that you want to be making sure that you’re talking about kids.

Whereas a 45-year-old mom, you’d want to be talking about what their self-care is and how do they become more of a person now that their child is probably moving on in life and being their own person. So that’s how you would want to start your themes.

ANGELA: Or the stress of a mom with a newborn is a different type of stress than the stress of a mom with a 12-year-old, a tween. Do they still call them that?

MEGHAN: Exactly, yeah.

ANGELA: Those are two different stresses.

MEGHAN: Exactly. If I were to be focusing on moms, I would be figuring out what age the child is too, because you’re almost dealing with two target markets. You’re dealing with the parent, but you also have to take into account what’s affecting their life and the children that they have.

ANGELA: Sorry, I didn’t turn my phone off today.

MEGHAN: Oh, those things happen.

ANGELA: Yeah, yeah, they do.

MEGHAN: We’ll just let that be unanswered.

ANGELA: I’m usually really good with unplugging my phone before I go live, and I just didn’t today. So let’s unplug that. Scott’s just going to unplug that phone right from the back.

MEGHAN: And that’s the joy of being live.

ANGELA: That’s the joy. Oops!

MEGHAN: Right? You’re in real life. These things happen. We’re all human. Again, that goes back to why I love Stories, because you can be so authentic with what you’re doing.

So I would say again, going back to what we were talking about, knowing who it is – 25 to 35, I would say 25-year-olds are still counted as a millennial, so you would want to be focusing probably on Instagram as your main platform just because that’s where we’re hanging out.

ANGELA: Instagram is video and photo.

MEGHAN: Video and photo. Yeah, video and photo. Primarily photo, but there’s a lot more video coming into it, and especially if you’re using a Story, you can go nuts with a 30-second video very easily and then attract people back to wanting to engage with your page.

The nice thing about Instagram, too, is it’s easier to get back to – people actually go to your page to want to look at all of your pictures, whereas Facebook, people barely ever go to your Facebook page. It’s like 1 in 5 or something will ever migrate over.

ANGELA: Wow.

MEGHAN: Yeah, which is pretty interesting.

ANGELA: So for 25- to 35-year-old moms, the number one place you should be is Instagram. That’s what you’re saying.

MEGHAN: Number one place you should be is Instagram. But I do think that Snapchat is another great place to be as well, because they will be posting pictures of their kid 24/7. Let’s just be honest. We love our children so, so much.

ANGELA: And little video clips of them in the bathtub and at the park and singing.

MEGHAN: Yeah, playing with something. There was one I was watching yesterday of – one of my friends has a two-year-old, and he likes to dress up, so he was trying on different hats. So cute.

ANGELA: That’s funny.

MEGHAN: Oh my gosh. And I kept watching it over and over again, because on Snapchat you can replay things too. They disappear, but you can replay. So that’s really generic traffic. And then what happens is if you watch something for long enough, an ad will pop up.

ANGELA: That’s interesting.

MEGHAN: Mm-hm.

ANGELA: So you can advertise on Instagram. We’re talking about organic content, but you can absolutely advertise on Instagram and Snapchat as well and interrupt people’s day, which is a different strategy. And you can implement both. So you want to be posting relevant content, showing what you do, and then hitting them with an ad every once in a while.

I think that’s interesting, Meghan, because I think that most people in business that are – I’m 44, so I have, in business, gravitated to Facebook. It’s interesting that we need to start looking at these other platforms for social media if our demographic is younger.

So if you really are targeting the 25- to 35-year-old moms, or even the 25- to 30-year-old moms, being on Instagram and Snapchat is a great trial, and see what happens.

And then third, is it Facebook?

MEGHAN: Oh, of course it’s Facebook. I’ll just say it right now: if you’re not on Facebook, please get on it. Well, if you’re not on Facebook, you’re not watching us right now, so that’s not really going to work.

But anyone who you know who’s not on Facebook and is doing business should be there. It’s the largest platform, and we have officially hit the two billion user mark. I don’t know if anybody saw that yesterday – I think it was yesterday or the day before that they actually rolled out video saying thank you for hitting the two million mark.

ANGELA: Billion.

MEGHAN: Billion. Wrong number. Yes, two billion. There are two billion active users on Facebook on a daily basis, and of those two billion users, 1.4 billion are actively engaging with the platform on a daily basis. So if you’re not there, you’re really missing out.

And then, again, going back to the joy of being a millennial, if you are trying to target them, then having that transition from your Facebook page to your Instagram page is a huge benefit. It actually alleviates a lot of the work for you.

ANGELA: Because you can cross-post easily.

MEGHAN: Exactly, yeah.

ANGELA: Speaking of work, 15 minutes a day. What are your top 5 tips to keeping it to 15 minutes a day?

MEGHAN: Top 5 tips? Be organized, definitely number one. Plan; got to have your content calendar.

ANGELA: How often?

MEGHAN: I plan monthly. You want to be planning the last week of the month before so that you’re ahead of the game going into your current month.

If you’re doing a campaign, you want to be thinking about your social media strategy – and when I say campaign, I mean you’re marketing something specific, you’re launching a new product, you’re holding an event or a conference or anything that you want to create big buzz around. Three months is ideal for your planning so that you’re consistently building up and building momentum towards what you’re promoting.

So planning, organizing, strategizing. It sounds weird to think that you have to do strategy on your own, but you should be thinking about what events are coming up – what holidays are happening through that month, what events are you going to, where do you want to be – so that you’re already planning ahead.

These are things that you should be doing in your business every day regardless, and this is why having a business plan and a marketing plan are key to your success. If you don’t have those two pieces, social media can be an endless game of trying to find the right people.

So as long as you know exactly who you’re targeting, then once you’ve organized and you know where you’re going in that month, then it’s creating premade content. That’s where video comes in.

We have a big comment. It’s from Scott. Thanks, Scott!

ANGELA: “I’m really enjoying Meghan’s perspective on Facebook…” Yeah. Oh, he wants to hear about Twitter. Okay, so we’ll finish with your 5 tips and then we’ll talk about Twitter.

MEGHAN: I said organizing, planning, strategizing. I call it creation, so creating your content. That’s where video comes in. Knowing what you want to be talking about in our videos, when are those videos going to go out, how are you going to lead up to them. And the last one is execution, and that’s where the 15 minutes comes in every day. If you’ve done all your planning – and planning takes me about an hour.

ANGELA: A month?

MEGHAN: A month.

ANGELA: An hour a month. I spend that a day, thumb-scrolling.

MEGHAN: Right, we all do.

ANGELA: An hour a month.

MEGHAN: An hour a month.

ANGELA: We talked about that. That means we’re going to be proactive instead of reactive, and reactive is where we waste time on social media.

MEGHAN: Exactly. The more proactive you can be, the more success you’ll have because what will happen is in those 15 minutes per day, not only are you making the posts that you need to make every day, but then a post takes 5 minutes if you know what you’re talking about. That gives you 10 minutes to go look for secondary content, to like, share, and love other people’s stuff and comment on your following so you’re building a reputation of being engaged with your following.

And then while you’re using that 10 minutes, there are probably things that you’re going to find. That’s the great thing about Facebook and their publishing tool; you can preschedule stuff that’s already ready to go for you down the line. So it’s a snowball effect. 15 minutes per day, over time, all you’re going to be doing is engaging.

MEGHAN: Yeah. If you want to do business, you should be on Twitter. The reason that Twitter is so awesome is it’s a sounding board. It’s like having a microphone, and you’re screaming to the world, pretty much.

How Twitter works is that when you tweet something, it’s different than the other platforms where it’s only visible by your following; it’s actually visible by your secondary following as well. So if someone in your following sees it, then somebody in their following can also see it. It increases the likelihood of you being followed, which is the goal of Twitter.

And because Twitter is only 140 characters, it’s bite-sized pieces. Millennials who are young professionals love to connect through Twitter. There are those who say that it’s a dying platform, but as a business platform itself – I don’t know if anyone knows who Malala is. Do you know who Malala is?

ANGELA: Mm-hm.

MEGHAN: She just got Twitter two days ago. Do you know how many people she’s following? She’s following seven people, and she has 638.7K followers. In two days.

ANGELA: Wow.

MEGHAN: Crazy, right? And that’s just because she posted, and someone else saw that she was posting and the following just kept coming.

ANGELA: Snowballed.

MEGHAN: It’s a snowball effect, yeah. It’s awesome. And one of the really cool things that they just came out with – it’s kind of a beta thing right now, so depending on how long you’ve been on Twitter you may not have access to it yet. Some of the older profiles, they’ve allowed access to this beta video analytics so you can see every single person that’s viewing your videos.

ANGELA: Oh, that’s cool.

MEGHAN: Yeah, I think it’s so cool.

ANGELA: That’s really cool.

MEGHAN: Yeah, because then you can actually tell – if you can see how many people are viewing your video, you know exactly how many are turning into leads, and then how many of those are turning into customers.

ANGELA: It’s funny. So if Twitter is going down, it’s not without a fight.

MEGHAN: Oh yeah. They’re fighting hard.

ANGELA: That is really cool right there.

MEGHAN: Yeah, I love it.

ANGELA: That’s really cool. I want your perspective on video being the number one. Why do you think video is the number one form of communication on all the social media platforms?

MEGHAN: Let’s just get real here. 75% of all media is viewed on YouTube now. 75% of millennials. We’re not watching TV anymore, just as millennials as a whole. We are more opting to be on our phone or be on a tablet and watch YouTube.

What that means is that if 75% of us are on YouTube as a platform alone, that’s why Facebook was like “oh my gosh, we need to up the game with Facebook.” Facebook has announced that they are trying to compete with the realm and the competition that Netflix has, so eventually what we’re seeing is that probably within the next few years, we’ll start to see more content and actually videos and shows and that kind of stuff on Facebook itself.

The goal that Facebook as a company has, they want to keep you on their platform for as long as possible. So rather than supporting Netflix, they’re just going to take over that completely.

ANGELA: Wow. Wow! Of course they are, of course they are.

MEGHAN: And if you think about all the news channels as well, I don’t know if you follow – obviously everyone’s following what’s going on in the States, but different news channels – if they’re not digital, then they’re dying.

Take for example just using something local with Guelph, when the Mercury and Guelph Today merged – or the Guelph Mercury and the Tribune merged. Sorry I got that wrong; I’m from Kitchener, so I try to keep up with what’s going on everywhere else, but sometimes I can’t. It was because the Mercury didn’t have enough to support an online arm, where the Tribune did. That’s where they joined forces so that they could support their online audience. Because the majority of news is viewed online now.

Even if you’re looking at a news feed, if you’re watching CNN, they’re asking you to go to Twitter, they’re asking you to go to Facebook. And usually they’re repeating the same interview or news feed that they have on the television. It’s also repeating online.

ANGELA: Yeah. I actually don’t have cable; I watch all of my TV online, which I don’t watch a lot of TV – well, I guess I watch it, but it’s not traditional. I don’t watch the news. I specifically don’t watch the news because it brings me down because of the negativity. So I specifically don’t watch the news, but when I do, it’s usually a few seconds on Facebook. That’s where I see the news. It’s not on TV. I see it all on Facebook.

MEGHAN: Exactly. You’re a great example, because you don’t even have cable. If people don’t even have cable, the only way that they’re accessing TV is through the internet. The main portals right now are YouTube, which is owned by Google, Netflix, which is its own entity, and then Facebook. That’s really it.

ANGELA: And all of them, you can use advertising. But if you’re going to advertise, it has to be a video.

MEGHAN: It has to be a video.

ANGELA: Right? You can’t advertise on YouTube and not use a video. You can’t advertise a product or service on Facebook, I think, without using a video to convey the importance of what you do or the service or product that you provide.

MEGHAN: It all goes back to how much time you actually have to view. It’s called scrolling when you go down your news feed. You only have 5 seconds to make an impact, so if you’re not using video – and especially now with how consistently there are ads, you may have noticed that you’re doing this yourself, that you’re brushing past them. But if there’s a video, you at least watch the video. I know I do. All the time.

ANGELA: Good point. All right, well, thank you so much for coming in today. That was a lot of information. I don’t want to overwhelm anyone too much, but I hope that you found it helpful, especially breaking down the demographic and looking at things besides Facebook while you’re on Facebook.

If you have any questions about social media, post them here and Meghan will be sure to get back to you. I will send every single question to her if I can’t answer it. And if you have a topic you want me to cover, please post a comment and we will cover that next week.

In the meantime, have an awesome Monday. We’re going to be replaying this at our – pardon me – that’s the other point about being live. We’re going to be replaying this at our regular time tomorrow, as Scott and I are away tomorrow.